The Zimmer minion of choice for
The Legend of
Tarzan? Rupert Gregson-Williams, a veteran of the Media Ventures
days still struggling to shake those Zimmer ghostwriter origins. In all
seriousness, Rupert Gregson-Williams, bother of the much better
established Harry Gregson-Williams, is among the more talented of the
army of Zimmer clones to rise through the Media Ventures/Remote Control
ranks. Despite enjoying solo projects of note for more than a decade by
the time of
The Legend of Tarzan, however, most of
Gregson-Williams's recognition has come from the genre of utterly stupid
comedies. Perhaps the greatest disappointment regarding this 2016
project has been the massively wasted opportunity to showcase not only a
Grigorov endeavor, but really any intelligent score at all, because
Gregson-Williams and his own ghostwriters, perhaps due to time
constraints, produced a minimally effective, devastatingly derivative
Zimmer-clone score for
The Legend of Tarzan, one with no
originality whatsoever. Zimmer reportedly had nothing to do with the
music's composition, but somebody may as well have copied and pasted
pieces of his scores from the mid-1990's to mid-2000's indiscriminately
and achieved the same end. A veteran Zimmer collector will either accept
this mass regurgitation at face value and enjoy its melodic passages or
will approach it as infantile amusement as he literally guesses each
upcoming chord progression with ease. It's almost as though
Gregson-Williams tried to address the region with a combination of
Beyond Rangoon and
Tears of the Sun, the melodrama of the
characters with
The House of the Spirits and
Pearl Harbor,
and the action with
The Dark Knight and
Man of Steel. And
that's just in the tone of the orchestrations and mix. When you throw in
the themes, you receive the only marginally redeeming aspect of the
score, ironically aping other Zimmer ghostwriters' imitations of 1990's
Zimmer power anthems. It almost sounds as though these interchangeable,
incestuous, muscular themes are no longer imitations of the original
Zimmer inspiration but rather an extension of those imitations that have
come before. So when you listen to
The Legend of Tarzan, you're
less inclined to be reminded of a Zimmer "classic" than you are the
Jablonsky, Glennie-Smith, and Rabin emulations, among many others, of
that sound.
For most of its length,
The Legend of Tarzan
truly sounds like a Jablonsky score ready-made for the
Transformers franchise. Expect no significant narrative
development for characters or location. There's no meaningful difference
in the tone of the music for the scenes in England and those in the
Congo. The latter is simply treated to some ethnic woodwinds and the
mindless percussive pounding and electronic effects suitable for the
Batmobile. Churning strings and moody brass are familiar players, light
choir offering the fantasy appeal in several places. Zimmer collaborator
Lebo M composed vocal lines for the opening cue, though the somber
performances by Zoe Mthiyane have little impact on score as a whole.
Both the suspense and baseline action cues in
The Legend of
Tarzan could often be classified as stock Remote Control filler,
achieving nothing other than grinding or thumping ambience. Where
Gregson-Williams excels to some degree is in the rendering of his
melodies. More specifically, his use of counterpoint in the score is
quite adept, so much so that he muddies his themes by allowing the
counterpoint lines to exist by themselves at times. Good luck trying to
definitively separate out each idea, because they blend together in
progression quickly. The highlight is the main theme, heard at 1:23 into
"Catching the Train," 0:29 into "Jungle Shooting," 2:16 into "On the
Boat," and with gusto at the end of "The Legend of Tarzan," the last of
which the brainless, easy-listening highlight of the score. Meanwhile, a
heroic alternative theme is teased at the end of "Diamonds" before
enunciating itself fully at 0:53 into "Where Was Your Honor?" and 2:25
into "Stampede," the latter the score's most ambitious action cue.
There's a location theme of sorts at 0:50 into "Returning Home" and 1:39
and 3:05 into "Stampede," and a variant of this idea seems to exist at
1:28 into "Boma Port." All of these thematic mutations share minor-third
progressions. The muted love theme, however, is the score's greatest
weakness, developed in "Togetherness" but devolving into understated
mush in "Tarzan and Jane" and "Campfire." Those who admire Zimmer clone
scores will find solid enjoyment in the last four or five tracks on the
arduous album release, which ends with an unrelated but surprisingly
non-offensive rock song. The vocal, percussive and woodwind accents are
sometimes buried in the mix, leaving the basic string and brass passages
of power anthem origins as the only aspect of the work worth
recommending. The Zimmer machine cranks out another one.
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